Author: Yue Xiaoyu
The former CEO of Ant Chain has started a new public chain called Pharos, and has also brought in a team of technical developers from the Ant Group.
It is precisely this team background that led Pharos to establish an exclusive partnership with Ant Group, primarily focusing on RWA, bringing real-world assets on-chain.
The relationship between Pharos and Ant is similar to the relationship between Sui/Aptos and Meta.
Since domestic companies cannot create public chains, the technical team will independently develop a public chain.
Although it is not officially a public chain developed by Ant Group, it is actually closely related to Ant Group and can be considered a “direct lineage” project.
Let’s take a detailed look at this new public chain of “Chinese Power.”
1, Breaking Through Under the Dilemma of China’s Power Policy
Consortium chains are very limited; public chains are the future. Transitioning from consortium chains to public chains is an inevitable choice for domestic blockchain companies.
Public chains have long been viewed as a red line due to their decentralized characteristics and potential regulatory risks, and domestic companies can only engage in consortium chains that offer stronger controllability.
In the field of consortium blockchains, the domestic big brother is Ant Group, whose Ant Blockchain has accumulated rich experience in scenarios such as supply chain finance and digital asset confirmation.
However, the limitations of consortium chains are becoming increasingly apparent: the closed ecosystem, high collaboration costs, and the inability to connect with the global open-source community have made it difficult to support greater technological ambitions.
The birth of Pharos is a breakthrough to this predicament.
The former CEO of AntChain led the core team to independently create a completely decentralized public chain, avoiding the policy risks of domestic companies directly involving in public chains while retaining Ant’s technological genes.
This strategy of “curve-saving the country” is strikingly similar to the path taken by Sui and Aptos as they emerged independently from Meta: the technical team separates from the parent organization and participates in global public chain competition as an independent entity.
This model not only provides an opportunity to unleash the potential of China’s blockchain industry but also opens a window for domestic technological forces to participate in the Web3 wave.
Therefore, the signals released by Pharos behind it are worth our attention.
2. New public chain with ant genes
Pharos is not starting from scratch, but rather a continuation of the accumulation of Ant Blockchain technology.
During Ant Group’s seven years of deep cultivation, its team has laid a solid foundation in high-performance blockchain design, distributed system optimization, and enterprise-level application implementation.
Pharos inherits this technological heritage and has launched what is claimed to be the fastest EVM-compatible Layer-1 public chain, achieving an astonishing performance of 50K TPS and 2 gGas/second.
This indicator not only surpasses Ethereum but is also considered top-notch within the EVM ecosystem.
At the same time, Pharos has chosen an EVM-compatible route, indicating that it has fully considered ecological continuity.
This not only lowers the barrier for Ethereum developers to migrate, but also facilitates rapid access for global projects.
From the transformation from consortium blockchain to public blockchain, Pharos has not abandoned the technological advantages of Ant Group, but has upgraded it to a globally-oriented open-source network.
Imagine, what kind of products will be built when the high-performance technology accumulated by Ant in the alliance chain combines with the openness of the public chain?
The narrative space here is very worth imagining.
3. Focus on the RWA Track
Pharos’s strategic positioning focuses on real-world assets (RWA), which is both a precise grasp of global trends and a continuation of Ant’s existing advantages.
RWA, as an emerging track in Web3, aims to digitize and release the liquidity of real-world assets such as real estate, supply chain receivables, and artworks through blockchain.
Ant Group has been laying out its plans in this field for many years, and its supply chain financial solutions and asset digitization technology have a good reputation in the industry.
The exclusive partnership between Pharos and Ant Group directly integrates this accumulation into the public chain ecosystem, providing very favorable conditions for the large-scale implementation of RWA.
Pharos can not only quickly enter the RWA market by leveraging Ant’s resources, but also technically complement Ant to jointly explore diverse scenarios from supply chain finance to real-time payments.
More importantly, Pharos does not limit its vision to Ant, but takes it as a starting point, planning to expand to global institutions and enterprises.
Pharos is leveraging RWA to drive the next growth engine of blockchain.
4. Future Challenges
The opening of Pharos can be described as strong.
Since its establishment, it has rapidly completed an $8 million seed round financing, and in early 2025, it launched the developer network, a global hackathon, and a $20 million ecological funding program, demonstrating efficient execution.
The collaboration with Ant Group has provided a guarantee for short-term implementation, especially in the RWA field, where dozens of projects have expressed their intention to join.
However, it must be admitted that the competition in the public chain ecosystem has become intense.
Pioneers like BNB and Polygon have already seized the market opportunity, and Pharos needs to find more differentiated advantages beyond performance.
On the other hand, the implementation of RWA involves a complex regulatory environment and the acceptance of traditional institutions, which requires time and the patience to promote cross-border collaboration.
5. Summary
The birth of Pharos is the product of Ant Group’s uncontainable ambition.
It is also a new exploration made with the help of the RWA wave.
From the relaxation of policies in Hong Kong to traditional internet giants like Ant Group entering the market, we can see that some changes are happening in the broader environment.
Pharos is a new force for the global Web3 ecosystem, let’s take a look at what new things this new force will create.
